We Papua New Guineans, make excuses for wife-bashers. We say "it's a family problem" and we shouldn't get involved. But look at what it is doing to us as a society! Its causing children to accept that violence is a way of life. We complain about assaults and killings but not domestic violence. What is wrong with us??

Blinded for lifeA young mother is completely blind because of injury inflicted by her abusive policeman husband in a violent three-year marriage that ended in November last year. She is Elsie, who lives at the Bumbu Police Barracks in Lae with her family. Her father is also a policeman based in Lae. A mother of a beautiful nine-month-old baby girl, Elsie was forced to flee from her home at the Taraka Police Barracks, at the outskirts of Lae city, where she lived with her rogue cop husband and fled from him to live with her parents at the Bumbu Police Barracks.Her tale is similar to that of another young mother, Joy Wartovo who bravely went public with her story of suffering abuse, beatings and burns from her police husband in December last year. In the case of Elsie, the three years of marriage to this member of the Lae Police Task Force was, like Joy’s marriage, hell on earth.Of all the beatings and abuse she received at the hands of her husband, Elsie had to put up with them for the sake of their child but the last attack on the 28 November 2010, changed her life completely.In one of his jealous rages, the policeman husband attacked Elsie and threw his mobile phone at her, hitting her in her right eye.Elsie had only one good eye. When she was in grade six in school, she was playing with her friends and had a freak accident, which resulted in her losing sight in her left eye completely. She had depended on her right eye, which became the target of her husband’s rage.